


these fantasies come flailing around

by allegoricalrose (SilentStars)



Category: Doctor Who RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-14
Updated: 2015-06-23
Packaged: 2018-04-04 05:59:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4127572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilentStars/pseuds/allegoricalrose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set during the 2006 TV Choice / TV Quick Awards</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Where are you?”

The shower’s still running, his hands transferring shampoo bubble onto his mobile, so it takes him two more beats than it should to process her words. Or maybe that’s the seashore in his ears or the ocean in his mouth or maybe it’s the sprinting of his heart or maybe it’s all those, jogging on a sunsetting beach and he’s running toward her and—

“David? Are you there?”

He clears his throat and shuts off the water. “Billie.” Standing wet and naked and utterly vulnerable as they speak feels just about appropriate.

“Oh good. Where are you?”

“I’m in my hotel room…getting ready. You?” He grimaces and shakes his head at his asinine verbage.  _Be normal: don’t answer every single one of her questions like a polite little alter boy._

“In the car. I’m on my way over to you; I cancelled your pickup.”

“You…what?”

She speaks as if she’s twisting a strand of hair around her index finger, little knowing or maybe knowing full well that she’s got him contorting in tandem with the hapless tendril. They never stood a chance, he and that flaxen lock. “I thought we should go in together. Save petrol, promote the show… All that lark.”

There’s a bit of Cassandra in her voice (or is that Billie in Cassandra?) and he’s glad she can’t see the shiver that ricochets through his spine at the associations those memory traces evoke. He hasn’t spoken to her since the V-festival two weeks ago, since all those tipsy confessions and whispered discussions in the VIP tent, and it shouldn’t be this awkward, in no universe should the air feel this thick and his throat this tight. In the mirror he watches suds merge and then slide down his arm before replying.

“Billie, I…I don’t know if that’s such a good idea. Us, arriving together.”

“I cleared it with the publicity. They love it.”

“Your flat is on the other side of London, it doesn’t make sense. Besides,” he realises in a sad little triumph, “I was just about to hop in the shower. I won’t be ready for a while yet. I don’t want to make you wait in the car for ages. Go ahead, I’ll re-order a car for myself.”

“You’ve got plenty of time, I’ll find a way to occupy myself. Oh, that’s right, I remember where you’re staying now.” Her voice is muffled as she calls out some directions to the driver. “What’s your room number?”

It’s more than a placid seashore in his head now; it’s a bloody tsunami.

“Why?” He’s fully aware his pitch is verging on canine-exclusive.

She speaks as if she’s calming an overwrought toddler, with all the assertion of a mother who knows she’s always right because she makes the rules. And she does. She always does. “Because I’ll wait for you to get ready up there. It’s boiling outside.”

It is indeed the tail end of a heat wave across Europe but he also knows the car has air conditioning while his hotel room, in fact, does not.

He also knows he’s lost the fight and that he never wanted to win in the first place.

“312, but—”

“Be there in ten.”

“Bill—”

She’s gone and his heart sinks even as it fights its gravitas with beating wings.

Right. Shower. The one nugget of control he still possesses, the possibility ( _make that necessity_ ) being fully-dressed when she waltzes in. He jumps back in and rubs the shampoo out of his hair with such excoriating vigour that he re-opens a healing scar he didn’t realise was there.

Shoving that line of metaphorical rumination into a steel-lined box, he grabs the towel and dries his hair, struggling into a tight pair of formal trousers with wet legs before slamming them to the ground in disgust and reaching for an old faded pair of jeans. Something tells him that loose garments will serve him better this evening anyway.

There’s a knock at his door before he’s even unbuttoned his white shirt from where it’s hanging in the closet, stiff and starched. His breath catches and his eyes flicker in a panic between shirt and the door, frozen with indecision long enough that she knocks again, louder this time. Even her knock is confident and he sighs as he crosses over to let her in, abandoning any hope of maintaining his dignity yet again in her presence. It’s not like he’ll avoid making a fool of himself  _somehow_  tonight; it might as well be while he’s bare from the waist up too.

She breezes in and to her credit and his relief doesn’t comment on his state of dress, only kisses the air near his cheek to avoid smudging her lipstick and dumps her Harvey Nics shopping bags on his bed.

“I told the driver to be outside at half past; that enough time for you to get ready?”

A glance at the clock tells him ten minutes will cut it tight but says nothing, only nods and silently reprimands his fidgeting hands to still. She’s in trackie bums and a t-shirt but her hair and makeup are pristine and not for the first time he wonders if he’s ever seen her in any state that isn’t perfection.

( _She’s radiant with mascara running down her face and puffy eyes and he can’t take his eyes off her even as his new girlfriend stands watching on that blasted beach_ )

“David? You alright? You look a little…peaky.”

He nods, his eyes never leaving the headboard to the left of her face. Should he ask about the outcome of what they were talking about at the festival? Is there a way to enquire about a thing like that without sounding desperate or self-seeking? Maybe she’ll bring it up on her own and he can bury his head in the sand until then.

Shrugging, she lets it go and begins to paw through her plastic bags until giving up and dumping their contents all over the bed. Assorted pieces of lipstick and other colourful tubes he couldn’t name if a gun were pointed at his head roll onto the floor, a few disappearing under the frame. She puffs out a deep breath and her fringe flutters for a moment before settling. There’s a flash in her eyes, an expression that ghosts across her face for only an instant that he can’t define, only notices because of the long hours they’ve spent acting across each other. And, of course, because his attention is entirely entranced by her presence and he can almost track the beating of the pulse in her neck. How has she managed to entrain his biological rhythms, too?

For a second, even less, she’s unsettled and he’s even more unsettled to see her this way, to see the curtain drop and all those insecurities and anxieties leak out.  _She’s_ the strong one, the one jaded by experience and resilient to even the strongest bend; it’s at times like these, these rare times he’s in the minority to witness, that he loves her even more. If it’s possible. It’s not. Until the next second. And the next. Oh, crackers.

And then she’s back and she’s cocking her head at him and grinning that Billie Piper smile, the one that entices interviewers and reporters to fall to her feet and may well be the impetus for the Pied Piper mythology. He’d follow that smile into death and beyond.

“Fuck. Forgot my bra at home. Oh well, I’ll just have to make do.”

His mouth drops open of its own accord but it’s a necessity because he’s no longer getting enough oxygen into his system. Does that mean she doesn’t have one on now? Or that it’s the wrong colour? What colour could it be? Maybe it’s red and lacy and— He snaps his mouth closed and wets his lips.  “Oh. You…Do you want to run home and get it? Or we could stop over on our way, although it’s not  _really_  on our way, but, um, I can be ready in thirty seconds and—”

Her smile ups its wattage and threatens to blow out all of central London’s power. There’s a gleam in her eye too, one with super powers to make his knees weak. He tries to swallow the excess saliva pooled in his mouth and fails and he’s shirtless, he’s bloody shirtless and standing in front of  _Billie Piper_  and discussing her undergarments and he wonders if that faint buzzing in his ear is the beginning of a panic attack.

“Nah, it’ll be alright.” She rustles through a makeup bag and holds up a roll of something pinkish in triumph. “Boob tape. Saved my life more times than I should admit.”

He crosses his arms in front of his chest and immediately uncrosses them, feeling like a self-conscious adolescent girl in a swimsuit. Twirling the tape around her finger, she glances over at him and his permablush deepens.

“Well hurry up then! You mind if I nick the bathroom?”

His exhalation is none-too-subtle and he doesn’t miss the smirk that flits across her face. “Course. I’ll just—” He gestures vaguely to the closet and hopes it’s looks like more than hand flapping. It doesn’t.

Her garment bag, wrinkled and bent in ways that probably aren’t conducive to its purpose, is in her arms but she diverts her trajectory to the ensuite and instead steps over to stand in front of him. With a motion he supposes to be calming but is quite the opposite, she lays her hand on his arm and catches his gaze with a steady grip.

“Dave?” She doesn’t ask but he knows exactly what she’s asking, exactly what she’s confused about today and why he’s so quiet and jittery, but he can’t explain how she makes him feel, can’t explain how he’s fine when he’s in character or in a raunchy interview or even just rehearsing a scene late a night in their trailers or in their Cardiff apartments because there are rules and boundaries and buffers around their easy flirtations but at times like this, when they’re just themselves, that he realizes that there is no rulebook, no script to guide his behavior, and he’s floundering.

He opens his mouth; her eyes break contact with his for a heady millisecond wherein he can imagine a million different scenarios and intentions and fantasies and rejections reverberating across the universe. There’s the one where he leans in and her lips are hot against his, the one where he pulls the glaring red alarm clock cord out of the wall and pushes her into it instead, the one where his Scottish Presbyterian morality asserts its ugly head and he beseeches forgiveness for coveting his next-door neighbour and he changes the subject and there’s no doubt to which universe he’s tethered.

He wants to sink into her skin. He knows he won’t. Still, the possibility hangs between them, dancing and screaming in the breeze of their breaths.

His mouth closes again and he reaches down to squeeze her other hand quickly, chastely.

“Sorry. Just nervous I guess. About the awards.”

“Bullshit,” she laughs and violent shivers rip through his spine as her puff of air hits his bare chest. “You are not.”

He erupts in laughter in response, a deep belly laugh that begins to erase some of the haze in which he’s been swimming since those eight little notes of her ringtone pealed out.

She disappears into the bathroom with a cheeky backward glance and he sucks in deep breaths.  _Get a hold of yourself, McDonald_ , he scolds himself with all the vehemence and shame of Mrs. Donaghue, the elderly parishioner from whom he hid from every Sunday as a child.

His breathing is just about under control, enough at least to appear normal, when the door swings open again and his golden idol saunters out. It’s not a dress this time, the first time that evening he’s been granted a prayer, but while her legs are safety tucked away in the pleated grey trousers (somehow perfectly pressed despite her manhandling of the garment bag) he has to forcibly tear his eyes away from the deep neckline of her white blousy…thing. It’s gauzy and sheer and she’s his Seraph and she’s his original sin.

“What were you  _doing_  while I was in there?” she asks distractedly, her attention focused on preventing the too-long hem of her trousers from crumpling as she pads over to the bed. “Get dressed you mook!”

He’s still shirtless and his fingers are still too incompetent to unbutton the shirt still hanging in the closet. He says nothing, only looks down at his hands and attempts to avoid looking at the vast wasteland of his flat stomach and thinking about the vast expanse of her breastbone on show. There’s a mole on her shoulder, hidden under the shirt, but he wants to know what other marks this glorious shirt might reveal, if there are freckles on her chest and all he has to do is look because he’d been too distracted by film cameras and lines last time this much flesh was on display and every single neuron is currently working overtime to prevent a gaze shift in that direction.

There’s silence as she drops her armful of clothes and…brassiere tape…onto the bed and then she’s at his side, almost but not quite touching as she unbuttons the shirt and holds it out to him. Bless her, she understands, and  _oh blimey_  she understands.

“I…” he chokes out and has to clear his throat. His hands refuse to take the bloody shirt, deciding to lie limp and sweaty at his sides.

She doesn’t roll her eyes and he almost hates her for it. But he doesn’t, he’s too busy imagining what a beautiful mother she’d make as she drapes his painstakingly-ironed shirt around his shoulders and guides his arms into the sleeves.

He busies himself staring down at her bare feet as she works on the buttons, starting at the top and working her way down. The cut of her toenails are a little ragged, the top of the pale pink varnish chipped like she clipped them after a pedicure, the big nail remaining too long, and her second toe is longer than the big one (his mum always joked it was a sign of battiness) and her feet are beautiful, just like the rest of her.

“I talked to him. Last night.” She says the words he’d been wondering about for weeks _oh_  so casually, her eyes on the penultimate button as his abdominal muscles tighten, but there’s an uncharacteristic hesitancy in her voice that belies her calm.

“Oh.” He’s lost for words and can only wait for her to move her fingers away from his crotch area before attempting coherent sounds. She straightens up but doesn’t meet his eye, smoothing down the sides of his shirt before turning back to her bags on the bed. “You… Are you alright?”

“Of course. I feel bad, obviously, but it had to be done.”

He swallows. What is one supposed to do with their arms? Where do they go and why are they so long and gormless? What’s their default position and why has he never learned it? “I’m sorry,” he finally forces out.

Her eyes rise to catch his finally, only for a millisecond but it’s long enough to reassure him that they haven’t disconnected somewhere along the way. A shoebox emerges out of one of her bags and she crosses one leg onto her lap. “Don’t be. Like I said last week, it was time. He understood, agreed mostly.”

“Good.” His eyes widen; why must his mouth vacillate between paralysis and hyperactivity rather than falling somewhere in the socially-acceptable middle?  “I mean, I’m glad you did what you needed to do.”

Her lips melt into a genuine smile, not her patented for-the-cameras Billie smile but one that he knows is real, isn’t yet another front or façade, and his heart begins to slow finally. There’s a matching smile dawning across his lips, stretched and goofy, and he does absolutely nothing to hinder its progress. “Me too,” she says, chewing at her lip before hiding it in her shoulder.

And though the elephant is still unnamed, it’s at least exposed and ushered away and he feels them click back into place. David and Billie, Dave and Bills: natural and supernatural chemistry restored. Maybe augmented. Maybe at its zenith. Or higher. He’s beginning to feel giddy and he barely bothers tampering it down.

Bouncing over to the closet, he pushes the garment bags across the rail, slamming the unwanted blazers into the wall so he can slip into his favourite. He’d planned on another one for tonight, a more conventional black one that would have matched his shoes and original jacket, but it doesn’t suit his mood anymore.

“Red velvet, huh?” Billie laughs from behind him and he beams down at her as he adjusts the cuffs. “Think I ate one of those cupcakes last time I was in New York.” Her tone lowers in volume and pitch. “Delicious.”

“Not as tasty as this, I assure you,” he banters right back without missing a beat, bending over to slide on some socks and lace up his shoes after shooting her a wink.

“Mmm. I only have your word on that.” He catches the tail end of a tongue lick across her lips when he glances back at her.

“Alas.”

She stalks over to his side once he’s straightened, her smile evolving into a smirk, and he’s never been happier to be the prey. “Have I mentioned that icing’s my favourite part?” she drolls.

He flips open the breast piece of his blazer, exposing more of his starched white shirt with a waggled eyebrow. “Plenty of that.”

The smirk turns devilish and the tongue makes an appearance. “Lucky me.”

And instead of stroking the shirt like he’d expected her to do, hoped she’d do, she ghosts the back of her knuckles over the exposed skin of his throat and follows their trail with her lips. It’s only a glance of a touch and then she’s gone, sauntering back over to the bed to gather up her belongings as if it had never happened.

Something happens as he swivels around to follow her with his eyes and with a scuffle and gurgle, a bottle of orange Lucozade is upended on the white hotel carpet.

“Oh,  _jings_!” he yelps, his balance all off again and panic rising up from his stomach. He dimly hears Billie chuckle as he’s dashing into the bathroom, snatching up the first towel he sees and rushing back to the crime scene to mop it up. His fringe falls in front of his eyes and he blows it up with a puff of air, continuing to rub at the stain like his spot in heaven depends on it.

There’s a soft hand on his arm and he slows his frantic movements but doesn’t stop. It disappears but after a few seconds she’s back with a wet flannel, gently removing the towel from his hands and dropping the dripping one onto the spot. Her voice floats into his buzzing ears another moment later, a charming apology and request that someone clean up the spill into the hotel telephone.

He stills, sitting back on his heels.

“David. It’s okay.”

“Right. Yes. Of course.” A door closes out in the hallway and he flinches.

“Accidents happen. It’s okay to let it go sometimes.”

“Yep.” He closes his eyes for a moment.

She helps him stand, squeezing his arm once he’s up. “We have to go anyway,” she notes, gesturing to the clock with her eyes. He nods and she shakes her head at him with a chortle. His lungs forget their function when she uses the pad of her thumb to rub at the patch of skin on his neck that still tingles from her lips. “Jings?”

His cheeks heat up for no good reason. Isn’t he supposed to be the older one, the more experienced one? On both accounts, at least metaphorically, she has him beat and all at once he’s the tall gangly alter boy again. “Well…”

With bags full and in hand, she offers him her arm and he takes it, adjusting it immediately so that she’s instead holding onto his. Grabbing his wallet and phone off the bedside table, he quickly deposits them into his inside pockets before buckling his watch around his wrist. He manages it all without letting go of her, smiling down at the warm body tucked into his side as he fumbles. Alter boy or not, the woman at his side is stunning and her confidence allows his tense muscles to loosen once again.

As they’re making their way down the dimly lit hall, she reboards her train of thought. “You use the most adorable swear words of anyone I know.”

“Thanks. I think. Should I be thanking you?”

She slides her elbow away from his with a laugh and he almost makes a noise of protest but then her hand is in his and that noise becomes a much more contented one.  

“I’m not as pure as you might think, though,” he comments casually as they enter the lift, trying to temper his words so they don’t seem eager and pleading.

She snorts.

“I’m not! I swear all the time.  _You came fourth out of fucking four in the fucking discus_.”

“Quoting old lines of yours really doesn’t count.”

“Oh no?” And just like that he’s drunk on her but thankfully just sober enough to close his mouth against whatever is threating to babble forth next. Things she probably already knows.

“No. But that’s okay. I like you just the way you are.”

“Ditto, Miss Piper.”

“Good.” She bumps her hip into his and he sways his arm against hers in response.

“Good.”

He can’t quite let it go.

“Obscenities are best held back for impact, anyway. Using them all the time dilutes their purpose.”

“When David swears, take notice. Got it.”

“And don’t you forget it,” he murmurs, quieter and lower than this line of banter would usually prescribe. For a brief moment, goosebumps rise on her bare arms under his fingers and just as quickly sink back down. He stares at her skin longer than he should, his head ducked and his gaze obvious.

The door parts with a jarring  _ding_  and by unspoken agreement they drop hands before entering the hotel lobby. He waves to the bellhop and the doorman and oh, anyone who catches his eye. This time she does roll her eyes but there’s a smile in them and he wants to roll her across his body.

He doesn’t. But he shoos away the driver and opens the limousine door for her, savoring the warmth from her back that seeps into his palm as he helps her inside. How many more award shows and events can they arrive together at before it’s suspicious? Oh, who’s he kidding: they’ve only flown under the press radar thus far because of how blatant they’ve acted in interviews about each other. Hiding in plain sight and  _oh_ , how he yearns for their stealth to be more than just in his head.  It’s so close,  _they’re_  so close, but the truth is still innocent and he hates the truth.

There’s a fully stocked bar inside, rows of decanters and bottles with shiny foil tops but the outside of her thigh pressed into his is a far more dangerous intoxicant than the contents of the entire bar combined. The hangover is worse too, he knows it in the depths of his bones, but that’s tomorrow and this is tonight.

His fingers itch to touch her and they do, squeezing her knee, trailing along her arm, tugging her closer and twisting the loose tendrils of her ponytail into new curls. It’s bliss, feeling her squirm against him and lean into his touch, but the electric touch of her reciprocating, brushing her hands along his jeans and adjusting his collar and tweaking his fringe—he’s pretty sure it’s heaven.

They’re talking and neither has any idea what about, just words to maximise all available lines of connection. At some point the driver closes the privacy screen. Rather than feeling shame or self-consciousness, he takes the opportunity to slide a leg under hers and tilt his hips so she’s half-draped across his lap.

Their empty words are silenced by the click of her seatbelt and then she’s straddling him under the guise of fixing a stubborn strand of hair, the insides of her knees pressed into the outside of his thighs but otherwise not touching. His hands on her legs feel every tremor in her muscles as they fight to maintain her balance around corners and through potholes: it’s only gentlemanly to move his hands to her hips to help. Her nails are raking through his scalp now and he’d close his eyes except that he wouldn’t be able to see her. It’s clearly an extremely stubborn hair she’s whipping into shape because all at once she drops down into his lap, their hips only inches away from touching, her tongue peeking between her teeth in concentration.

And then her hands slide from his head to his shoulders and then behind her to his knees. She sits back, watching him with an inscrutable expression in her eyes. Her breath is ragged, her breasts rising and falling in his eye line. He thanks whatever deity or demon hid her supportive undergarments this afternoon.

She waits. The first move is up to him. Always has been.

He hesitates.

But only because he can’t decide which patch of skin to taste first.

She moves back to her seat in his moment of indecision but it doesn’t matter anymore. His fall happens tonight. It’s inevitable, unstoppable. And from the flash in her eyes as they pull up to the Dorchester, she knows it too.


	2. Chapter 2

Of course he’s sweaty when they’re interviewed together on the red carpet. How could he not be? She touches him and makes wildly inappropriate hand gestures while talking about other things and his eyes skitter around, trying desperately not to be caught on camera looking down her low cut top while also answering questions about his new companion and other things he couldn’t care less about right now. All he cares about is the feeling of her skin under his thumb, how there’s so much more skin he hasn’t touched, what her fingers would taste like if he darted out his tongue out and—

She sways against him, a simple overbalancing on high heels to the cameras but from a gleam in her eyes he knows it was no accident. Blood is racing to places it has no business racing to while being interviewed about a children’s show and he tries to catch the eye of someone he knows, someone who could give him a plausible excuse to disentangle his fuzzy brain from the woman bumping her hips into his leg. Her sternum is perfectly sun-kissed, a radiating touch of pink, and he’s jealous of a glowing orb of gas.

An interview ribs her about lying to the press about her departure from Doctor Who and he leaps to her defense even as she admits it herself with that charming smile of hers. Carefully worded phrases: that’s what it’s all about. Carefully worded phrases they’d danced around for months when they lived in blissful denial of the truth. She was leaving even before he’d met her but it remained unspoken, un-interrogated in the bubblewrap of those nine filming months even as he’d counted the passing weeks as time left rather than progressing. He’s tired of talking about her leaving now, every single interview demands it; it’s like constantly whipping off a plaster and digging a salty finger in the wound and he does that more than enough by his own hand, thank you very much.

She repeats the word ‘desperately’ far too many times and he can’t help but agree.

Someone shoves a program in his hands and there are flashes snapping all over the place before they make it to the safety of the reception hall. There’s champagne once inside but he refuses with a distracted shake of his head. Billie takes one and with a meaningful look, she takes her leave, weaving herself through the throng of people more appropriately dressed than he.

Is he supposed to follow her? Is that what that look was ordering? Her wallet and lipstick and phone are in his pockets; she can’t go too far, anyway.

Should he feel this good about holding all her things?

His lips are dry and he wishes he’d taken the waiting staff up on that champagne after all, in the very least to wet his mouth enough that he can swallow.

After five excruciating minutes of mingling with people he doesn’t really know but should, five minutes of acting excited about things he’s never heard of and pretending to have watched things he’d not make his worst enemy view ( _five minutes without her)_ his phone buzzes and he excuses himself with relief.

It’s just a text from a number he doesn’t recognise but he ducks into a corner as if it’s something urgent.

_Holford Room._

Right. Bloody brilliant. Whoever has the wrong number has his eternal thanks.

_Sorry mate, I think you have the wrong number._

He considers asking the texter’s name, their thoughts on Tony Blair and the universe and the meaning of life, but instead opens up space invaders and skillfully evades asteroids all while looking studiously busy. He’s pleased with his old crowd-evasion technique when it buzzes again.

_right or wrong, how can you possibly know for sure?  c. carlos x_

He straightens too quickly and glances around to make sure no one else noticed his mouth drop open and curl into a dopey smile.

_Whose phone did you steal??_

_asked nicely. my thieving days are over- coming?_

Of course he is.

A dark-haired girl in a mustard-yellow dress he vaguely recognises from Emmerdale tries to catch his eye and he’s pretty sure Barbara Windsor is making a beeline for him but he manages to duck behind a column and escape through a doorway into blessed quiet.  

Right. Holford room. He snags a bellhop and asks for directions, waving him off when the man’s eyes widen and insists that the event is back where he’s just come from. An autograph for his son on a sweaty valet ticket later, he’s slipping into a cordoned-off room with a backward glance over his shoulder.  

The curtains are drawn and the room is dark so he’s squinting in the silence until he sees the glowing end of a cigarette and the dissipating smoke cloud. She’s in the far corner, perched on the arm of a cream armchair and staring off into space even as her foot is tapping against the wooden leg. The room is small, probably used for intimate dinner occasions and or as a side bar for weddings, the carpet plush and the mirror over the fireplace regal and imposing.

There’s no way she didn’t hear him come in but he doesn’t speak or move closer, only stands with his hands in his trouser pockets, watching. The giddiness and the frustration tampers down and he’s left with the less definable sensations of thickness in the air, a catch of his throat, a staccato in his heart. It urges him forward even as he’s doesn’t know what forward is.

The distance between them seems oceanic and the only way to get to her is to give in, to glide and sluice his way through instead of fighting against it.  She’s no siren but she’s no saint of sailors in distress either and when she finally swivels her neck to catch his gaze, he knows he’s in the presence of Cymopoleia, goddess of the giant storm waves.

He’s no longer afraid of drowning.

A doppler of muffled voices reverberates from the hall and then fades but they’re safe in the shadows. Sinking into the seat of the chair she’s leaning against, his eyes track her as she snuffs out the last embers of the fag into an ashtray on the mantle next to the full champagne flute and swivels her legs around so her back is no longer to him. She’s still on the chair arm and he doesn’t attempt to move her, only wraps an arm around her waist and closes his eyes. A noise of contentment escapes his throat and she answers it with a sigh.

“I can hear you thinking,” she comments after a minute, chewing on the side of her thumb and avoiding his eyes.

“No.”

“No?”

“Only variations along the theme of awestruck.”

She’s still as a marble statue. In the year he’s known her she’s always been in constant action, rocking in her chair or twisting her water bottle lid or toying with her jumper hem. All those promotional and tabloid photos that are taken of her…they’ll never fully capture her essencebecause she’s anything but static _._ Inertia is an unnatural state of being for Billie:she’sthe perpetual motion machine, taping her foot and chewing gum and licking her lips and rushing between people and places like her respiratory system’s dependent on it. Other people slow down to take a breath; she speeds up.

But now, with her neck bowed and in profile, beams of dusty light illuminating the hairs at the base of her ponytail, she’s celestial and he’s not sure she isn’t illusion.  

“Bills,” he pleads, supplicant; he’s not sure what for.

She falls, she slides into his lap and he rings his arms around her waist. Does every man feel this way when she’s in their grip, like they’d burn it all to the ground to keep her safe? It’s unexpected, this urge: it’s usually her blazing a trail for  _him_  to follow. Or is that just a far more complex piece of the illusion along with the smile and the kinetic spark?

Whatever it is, it’s too late; he’s following her Newtonian rules now, an object in motion until resistance or friction slows him down.

He hopes it’s friction.

The Earth orbits around the sun, the moon orbits around the Earth, and his lips have orbited about hers since their first meeting. But maybe he’s reached his perihelion, his midsummer’s eve, the closest point he’ll ever come to his star. With a contraction of stomach muscles and an adjustment of angles and angels, he surrenders to her gravity and presses his mouth onto hers.

Her lips are cool in the air-conditioned room but she tastes warm, of smoke and champagne and body heat. He shifts in the chair, tugging her closer with a hand at the nape of her neck, and she melts into him, slotting assorted limbs and body parts into the spaces of his own until he’s not sure where he ends and she begins. As his hands slide down to grip her hips he feels a moan rise up through her throat and vibrate through their open mouths and seconds later she covers his hands with hers, interlacing their fingers and digging her nails into her own flesh. Her tongue is soft, her lips are soft, she’s so  _soft_.

It’s an awkward position but let no one say he isn’t a hard worker. The inevitable crick in his neck isn’t a primary concern but she fixes it anyway, rising to her knees without letting go of his lips and slinging a leg over him so she’s straddling him again. And the fact that he can employ that sentence at all, let alone with the glorious adverb at the end, is wonderful. Brilliant. Outstanding.

He laughs (well, giggles might be a more appropriate descriptor) and she eases off his lips, sitting back with a smirk.

“What? What are you laughing at?” Her voice is sultry, the low notes striking a chord that resounds across all his peripheral nerve endings.

“Just… this,” he tries to explain, his hands roving unhurriedly along her body. “It’s…surreal, really. Lovely. Better than lovely. I feel intoxicated: you’re intoxicating.”

Partway through his gushing ramble she drops her lips to his throat, sucking lightly on his adam’s apple before trailing south. His hands roam north, skimming up her sides and slowing when their reach base camp. A long strand of her fringe is occluding her eyes as she tugs open his top button and he tucks it behind her ears before returning to her breasts, palming them both with the heels of his hands pressing into their centre and his fingertips unfurled like wings.  Her tongue darts out against the thin skin above his heart and she bites down, sucking hard enough to leave a mark.

“Sit up,” he begs, running his hands up her bare arms and pulling her away from his chest so he can kiss her again. “Please.” Her lower lip is just as plump as in his daydreams; he tugs at it with his teeth, rolls it between his lips and glides the tip of his tongue along its span before completing the circle of her upper lip too. He’s not letting her play this time, her seeking tongue ignored in his quest to catalogue the anatomy of hermouth, and he thinks he has her in check for once until she scoots closer into his lap and grinds her hips against his.

“ _Fuck_ , Bill!” he yelps, slamming his head back against the chair and screwing his eyes closed. Somehow he’s gone from a lazy partial to a throbbing hard-on without noticing, lost as he is in her taste, and it takes all his willpower and work ethic and maybe a desperate image of Mrs. Donaghue and her moustache not to shoot off right there like a sodding adolescent. “Fuck.”

He opens his eyes to her triumphant expression, flushed though it is. “Knew I could tease a fuck out of you sooner of later,” she crows, tongue in teeth.

“Tease is right,” he grumbles and proceeds to wipe that smug smile off her face when he slides his hands under the back of her shirt. She gasps, his cold fingers singeing against her hot skin, and he doesn’t apologise, only mirrors her earlier smirk as his hands drift around to the front.

Her eyes flutter closed for a moment and then fling open. “Oh, god,” she laughs and he freezes, not expecting that particular reaction.

“No, sorry, it’s just…” And before his eyes and mind have time to prepare themselves, she lifts the layers of material up above her breasts with a faint ripping sound. And then they’re there, he’s finally beholding her bare chest, and they’re—

He bursts into laugher of his own, a full-bellied fit that she joins in whole-heartedly. For all the vivid imagery he’d drummed up in the last hour and year of her uncaged breasts, not a single iteration has come close to reality. The reality being flesh-coloured tape crisscrossing and completely occluding the aureoles, various strips radiating out pulling her breasts up and supporting their weight with a series of complex configurations.

“It’s double-sided, too,” she chokes out between snorts. “Sexy.”

With a cheeky grin, he palms one, the sticky tape attaching to his hand and taking the breast with it. He feigns being stuck, concocting elaborate scenarios where he can’t detach and has to spend the award presentations with his hand down Billie Piper’s shirt.

He likes it.

“You’re like an erotic mummy,” he pants out, stomach beginning to cramp up from all the laughing.

“Or a bad plastic surgery patient Halloween costume.”

“A bad Barbie costume,” he adds with a chuckle, tracing a nail around where he might expect her nipple to be if the whole orb wasn’t covered and featureless.

They’re still chortling, muted now, when she drops the shirt back down and he leans his forehead against hers. She stretches her lips out to give him a quick peck while readjusting herself and he closes his eyes in contentment.

All her wiggling in his lap is pushing him to the edge again and he holds her hips steady.

“Bill,” he murmurs, his eyes still closed.

“Mmm?”

“We probably need to get out there. What time is it?”

She rests her hands on his shoulders, idly twirling the dampened curls at his neck. Her back is straight and he can feel the sinews of her muscles stretch taut against his hands as they wander up and down her sides. “No idea. You have my phone, remember?”

“Right.” He pulls her close while rifling through his inside pocket for the programme they’d handed him when they walked into the hotel, skimming it quickly and glancing at his watch. “Oh, sugar. We have to get in there.”

“Sugar?” There’s that tongue again.

His mouth melts into a grin. “FUCK!” he bellows, the sound piercing the heavy silence of the room. It’s jarring and painful and maybe he likes it.  “We have to get in there.”

Her lips quirk but then she contemplates him, an almost sad glaze coming over her eyes. “I love your quirkly little words, though. Part of your charm, I don’t know…”

“Ah, I see.” He drawls, shooting her a quirked eyebrow and a devilish grin. “You want me to be a lady on your arm and a whore in the bedroom.”

The light is back in her eyes and it’s back in his heart when she doubles over in laughter again. “Exactly!”

“I see how it is.” He wants to nip at her nose so he does.

“Yep. Glad we’ve got that sorted.” She stands up, slowly and languorously, and the cold air that hits his empty knees is a metaphor or pathetic fallacy or something, he’s sure of it. Can’t be bothered to follow that train of thought though, not when he can chase down his fire and warm himself again. She’s stretching, arms above her head with a wicked expression in her gaze. He catches her before she can lower her arms back down and she squirms deliciously in his grip as he plants rows upon rows of light kisses along the sensitive skin of her under arms and up to her inner elbows.

“You need a moment before we go back out there?” she teases with a rock of her stomach into his hips when he’s given both arms equal attention and finally let them drop to his shoulders.

“No point,” he growls, leaning in close so his lips brush along the shell of her ear. “You know as well as I do I’m going to be hard the entire award show.”

She plays with the hem of his blazer, a tongue-tipped grin dawning across her face. “You’re lucky this is so long.”

“Right on two counts,” he lilts with an eyebrow raise and she laughs and he laughs and he’s happy.

He’s so happy.

He adjusts himself as best he can when she steps out of his arms but it’s futile. She hands him her glass of champagne and he toasts her in the air but beyond the first sip to cement the cheer he’s not interested, handing it back to her. She takes a single sip too but then abandons it back on the mantle.

They don’t need bubbles to be effervescent tonight.

No one blinks at David Tennant and Billie Piper gliding back to the dwindling reception hall with arms around each other’s waists and not for the first time he thanks his lucky stars they’ve fed the public this touchy-feely, affectionate image of themselves. It’s true, it’s all so true, but it’s also more and it’s paradise that they can be covert about their current feelings toward one another by being overt about them. Hiding in plain sight and he likes it. He loves it.

Noel and Camille are at their table, too, along with a few other names he should probably recognise. He might know them, really, but his brain and vision are hyper-focused on the woman sitting at his side, her bare foot sliding up his jean leg under the table. They’re always sat next to each other at these for official reasons: the public loves it, and he loves the public and he loves the organisers.  

He’d been wrong; he’s not fully hard the whole time, only partially, but it’s not urgent, just a warm feeling that keeps him giggling at her whispered commentary about the presenters and finding excuses to reach across the table so he can brush his shoulders against hers. At some point he slips off a shoe so he can feel the skin of her foot against his but that’s possibly not the best idea when he has to awkwardly lace it back up under the table. But then it’s a  _brilliant_  idea because his face is in her lap and her hands pull at the roots of his hair for a moment and he sucks on the inside of her knee through the fabric of her trousers and  _yes_ , it still tastes like her. Her nails dig into his scalp for a moment and he can smell the heady scent of her arousal before he regretfully sits back up.

There’s a short intermission in the middle and she excuses herself to use the loo but not before she squeezes his knee and three minutes later they’re snogging in a darkened alcove, pressed up against jungle-themed wallpaper, his perfectionist tongue charting every darkened alcove of her mouth. Her hot little hand is skimming along the waistband of his jeans, seeking space to slip under, but his belt is drawn too tight. She’s about to unbuckle it one-handed when the gong rings out from the adjoining room, its cacophony ordering them back to the bloody ballroom.

“It’s a hotel,” she gasps out as he nips at her ear and then sucks just behind the lobe, trying in vain to ignore the clangor. “Hundreds of rooms. We could just…”

They could. He wants. But the trumpet is sounding and it’s not a decision they can make. Not really. They need to be back for the Best Actor and Best Actress awards, just in case they win. And they probably will: lady luck is on his side tonight.  

But he lowers his lips to the freckle between her breasts that he’s been distracted by all night first, and then the soft bases of his Tara second, and then the freckle on her shoulder that he has to push aside fabric to reach third, before letting her out of the cage of his arms and stumbling back to the banquet.

She wins and her acceptance speech is short, something about missing her co-stars.

He wins and his acceptance speech is short, something about how  _hard_  it was to step into Chris’s shoes. Her lips are quirked when he catches her eye up on stage; even with the glaring lights and sea of people he finds her like a lighthouse in a storm. He almost trips down the stairs in his eagerness to be back at her side, clinking his award statue to hers before sitting down. She drops her head on his shoulder for a beautiful three seconds.  

There’s some sort of kerfuffle when Paul O’Grady accepts his Ten Years at the Top award and starts spouting off about itv and the whole room begins to buzz, but it barely registers over the buzzing in his heart, in his veins, between his legs. It also doesn’t help that her palm is pressing into his definitely-not-only-partial erection under the tablecloth at that point. He probably moans and he’s probably given sympathetic nods right back from across the table.

And then it’s all done and they’re herded back into the reception room for photos. Someone snags them just as he’s trying to steer them into a quiet hallway and then it’s pose after pose after pose until he sees only blistering white stars and Billie. Fortuitously most of the pictures are of them both, winners of best actor and actress, and he can draw her tight and not have to rein in his loopy smile. He lines up their statues into a constellation for a few shots and he likes it.

Then there’s a few with the whole cast, ones where she leaves his side and leans into Noel and he glares down at his watch (11:11, forty-nine minutes until midnight and there’s never enough time until they’re all pumpkins), and it’s fine. It’s really fine. Because then she’s back and the press is practically clapping in glee with how willing they are to pose together, the media darlings of the night. She leans her head on his shoulders and he beams down at her and there’s so much laughing, so much that his belly aches and it’s glorious.

She takes off her shoes after the official photos and she’s tiny next to him and that feeling rises again, the one where he wants to protect her and provide for her and many, many more things all of which are inappropriate in Crush Hall but might be alright in the Holford room and he spends a few moments imaging the pandemonium and press squeals if he just scooped her up bridal-style and ran.

His fantasies take another path altogether when he feel her fingers snaking into his jeans pocket. “Billie!” he gasps with a chortle that’s probably more of a giggle, capturing the errant little hand in his own.

“No, I…I need my phone, you plonker,” she clarifies between giggles of her own, her tongue protruding and her chin rubbing along the velvet of his jacket.

“Likely story,” he tuts but reaches into his blazer pocket and gives it her anyway.

Her smile falls flat as she’s scrolling through her messages but it inflates back up again when she sees him watching her. “Alright?”

“Never better,” he declares, planting his hand back on her hip where it’s been itching to be for the last thirty seconds.

“Ready to go?” She steps closer, her words quiet and low.

“Yes,” he over-enunciates, flexing his fingers tightly into her waist before dropping them.

“Let me go say bye to Noel and Camille; call our driver?”

“Mmmhmm,” he hums, following behind her as she sails through the crowds with all the finesse of a professional, barefoot and all. There’s no seam in the seat of her trousers (and he stares for a good minute) and blood begins rushing south as the notion that she may be knickerless too rolls around his mind’s eye.

She’s stopped by various cameras and people, posing with her megawatt smile and charming the lot of them, even holding up her Louboutins with an open-mouthed grin, but she also looks behind her every few seconds, keeping him in her periphery. She certainly never leaves his.  Perry Fenwick pats him on the arm in congratulation and David stares at him blankly before remembering he’s the bloke he’d waved to in one of the interviews this evening in an attempt to distract himself from Billie’s breasts.

He looks back over at them now. Magnificent. She catches him staring and lifts her hair up from her neck, ostensibly for a breeze. His mouth goes dry.

It’s 11:31 when she’s finally back at his side, quirking her eyebrow that he hasn’t called the car around yet. The phone almost drops between his fumbling fingers as he dials but this time his clumsiness is sparked by urgency rather than nerves: he wants to be alone with her as soon as humanly possible. It doesn’t help that she stares up at him as he speaks to the driver, worrying her lower lip between her teeth like he yearns to do, but it’s finally arranged and they’re finally free, declining the golden gift bags they’re expected to take as they make their escape. The cameras keep flashing as they duck out of the hall and Billie waves with an wide grin. He’s pretty sure he’s displaying an identical one but his mouth has long gone numb from the amount of smiling in the last few hours.

They can see the lights of the cameras outside before they even enter the lobby and she drops his arm with a sigh. “Suppose it’s fodder enough that we’re leaving together…again…”

“I don’t care,” he murmurs, drunk on her skin, grabbing her hand and swinging it between their bodies. “Let’s give them something to write about tomorrow morning!”

“Dave…” There’s a pained tinge to her voice and his frivolity drains in an instant.

“Sorry. No. Of course.”

The moment turns stagnant with questions and definitions that don’t make sense yet. They’re still holding hands but they lie limp at their sides.

“It’s just…” Billie finally breaks the silence. “Nothing good has ever come of…being seen with other people in the business. I’ve had death threats and press harassment and you know the thing with my parents…it’s just not a good idea. Ever, maybe.”

He feels like even more of a tosser. “I’m sorry. I was mostly joking, honest. Don’t take anything I’ve said tonight at face value.”

“Anything?” The tension starts to ebb away, little by little, half-smile by squeeze of the fingers.

“Well…” he bandies back automatically, falling into their comfortable rhythm; in truth, nothing important  _has_ been said tonight, not really. He wants to rectify that but not here. Maybe not even tonight. But he wants.

And then she reaches up on tiptoe and whispers something in his ear and he’s pretty sure his brain explodes because his speech centres are completely incompetent at rendering the content of her words. Luckily another, much more ancient neural centre understands the gist instantly, flooding his entire system with something hot and urgent. Before the garbled wheeze can escape his throat, she turns around and saunters out the door, shoes in one hand and a precarious combination of award and phone in the other.

It takes his legs a while to respond but eventually his mind whirls to life again. He dashes after her, walking at her side amid the blinding flashes and then ahead so he can open the car door for her. It’s a town car this time, not the limo they arrived in, but the bags she’d left in the earlier vehicle have been transferred over, the apologetic driver explains.

Moving to the other side of the car once she’s settled, he takes the far seat and is glad for it when paparazzi swarm the car. Ah. The downsides of non-tinted windows. He takes out his phone and pretends to read a message, eyeing her out of the corner of his vision as she fidgets with hers, sliding it open and closed with satisfying clicks while smiling tightly at the screaming crowd outside.

The driver congratulates them on the golden stars still clutched in their hands and then turns around once they’re out of the hotel, pulling onto a quiet side street.

“Where to?”

Billie turns to him, eyebrows raised.


	3. Chapter 3

_“Where to?”_

Billie turns to him, eyebrows raised.

“The night’s still young,” he drawls as carelessly as he can muster, thinking the same about his former co-star but pushing that toxic line of thought right out the window. “Shall we have a drink somewhere?”

She gives him a long look; it’s a good look but he can’t define it any better than that. Not when it makes him feel like he’s swimming in champagne bubbles.

“Blue Bar, in Kensington.  I think a few people mentioned they were heading there after. You know it?” she asks the driver without shifting her eyes from David’s.

“Right-o,” the driver calls back, making a u-turn. David briefly mulls over the best place to send the man flowers the next morning before he’s distracted once again by a glint in Billie’s eyes.

And the perfect sheen of her lips, lipstick reapplied at some point before pictures. He can’t wait to remove it. And other layers. Cotton and lace.

St. James’ park flashes past his periphery, brightly lit against the hazy dark, and he imagines picnics and clumsy races and tangling of limbs against the ancient trees. The object of his daydreams is typing intently into her phone and he’s trying not to be too obvious about staring at her while she does so. From the tiny curl of her lips, he’s not being as subtle as he thinks but he finds it difficult to care. Especially not when she scoots into the empty seat separating them and shows him the screen.

There’s nothing on it, just her menu screen. But she’s close now, legs pressed into legs, arms into arms, chins into shoulders, noses into hair. Her nail varnish is dark, probably black, but he imagines it claret to match his blazer. The seven-minute ride really is seven minutes in heaven and he wonders if the bar has a wine vault where they can play the game he was too scared to play as a skinny, awkward teenager.

The Blue Bar is in a hotel. He likes it.

Their driver explains that he’s off for the night but that if they call the central number again, a car will be happy to pick them up when they’re ready. David suspects he’s really being discreet and thanks him profusely, slipping a few large bills into his hand for tip. They take their awards and Billie’s bags with them, David holding them all and slipping the awards into the bags to make them easier to carry. Or, rather, easier to carry in one hand so his other’s free to wrap around her waist, sweaty from the unbroken summer heat even at close to midnight. A bead of moisture catches the light at her hairline and he wipes it away with the pad of his thumb.

The bar is quiet at this time of night, only a few other patrons scattered through the powder-blue room, and they choose a couple of overstuffed chairs in the corner, angling them away from the entrance and toward one another.

The bored waitress is at their side straight away, a menu in hand, but he knows he doesn’t have the patience to read text in his current state. He wants everything and he wants everything now and every passing second heaps on heavier anticipation. So it’s gin and tonics for them both and a happy shake of the head when she asks whether they’re after food. They’re certainly not after food.

After a few glances to make sure they’re not being observed, he drops his hand down to her knee, the heat under his hand reminding him that he’s been shivering in the cold without it for  _far_  too many minutes. His lips had been there earlier but it’s dry now and he’s disappointed. He wants to mark her again. Something that lasts longer.

She places her own hand atop his, curling her fingers through his. She sighs, long and deep, but neither speak for a few minutes. He’s happy and he knows she’s happy and it’s a heady feeling, sitting in silence while their unspoken words and emotions fly between their skin.

The waitress brings over their drinks and sets them down on napkins at their tiny table. He clinks his against hers but sets it back down again, untouched. But then she gives him such a loaded expression, half-lidded and blown-pupils, that he picks it back up and takes a long pull, swishing the bubbles in his mouth before swallowing.

Her attention drifts down to his mouth and then his throat as he drinks; she licks her lips and stands up, saying something about running to the loo. The bartended points her in the right direction and she thanks him, walking right past the signs to the toilets and heading instead back in the direction of the hotel lobby with a significant wink back at him over her shoulder. He fumbles for his drink again. How inappropriate would it  _actually_  be if he rolled the icy glass across his forehead?

But without her there he begins to feel his wheel of rumination whirl back to life, amplifying sounds and sharpening objects in his periphery again.

_“It’s just… It was fine while I was in Cardiff all the time, but now that I’m back in London… It’s a sign, if you don’t really miss a person when they’re away, yeah?”_

_“Maybe,” he affirms and then sighs, plucking some grass and rolling it between his fingertips. “But not always. There are ups and downs and—”_

_“Yeah. I guess.”_

_“Maybe you need a holiday; go to the Maldives or something.”_

_“Could do.” She pauses, looking up at him and then back down to the hem of his jeans where they’d remained for most of this discussion. There’s only ice left at the bottom of his plastic cider cup but he lifts it to his lips anyway, sucking on a cube to hydrate his dry mouth while waiting for what she’s struggling to say. “But when I think about that, there’s…there’s other people who I’d rather go with. But no, you’re right,” she quickly follows-up,  “and he’s lovely and safe and he’s_ there _, you know, and…” She trails off and runs her finger around the rim of her empty cup._

_He’s quiet for a moment. “Bill… It’s okay to be alone. To…date. You’re young, you should be having fun.” There’s slightly too much alcohol in his system right now because he shouldn’t be saying this; he shouldn’t ever be giving her advice on her love life. It’s the one taboo topic between them and for a good reason._

_But he doesn’t stop._

_“When was the last time you were single? You jump right out of relationships into new ones, don’t you? It’s…you’re strong enough by yourself, you know.”_

_“I know.” She sighs and her lips flicker downward before reshaping into the usual flirty smile. “You’re certainly good at it.”_

_He snorts. “Me? Hah!”_

_“You’ve been linked to every blonde ever associated with the show, don’t try to deny it.” Her tone is light, teasing._

_He looks away._

_“Not every blonde,” he mutters under his breath, and_ ohhh _yes, he’s far more intoxicated than he’d thought._

_“Just saying. You clearly have a type. God, you even dated that actress who I was up against for Rose in the final round of casting!”_

_“She wasn’t blonde,” he sulks. “And you’re deliberately changing the subject now, aren’t you?”_

_“Hmm,” she hums, kicking his leg lightly. He grabs her tights-covered foot before she can draw it back and holds on for a second, running a finger up the underside to make her squirm and then squeezing her ankle before letting her go._

_When he musters the courage to meet her eye again, he swears they’re darker than usual, but he barely has time to dwell on it because Matt returns, precariously balancing three full pints of lager, and he leaps up to help. Billie takes out a fag and takes a long drag, her gaze focused on a spot across the VIP tent which, as far as he can discern, is only a piece of canvas on the wall with a red star._

He thinks about stars as he traces the edge of his award, thinks about her incandescence and her glow, tries to think about futures and fireplaces and tiny shoes. His heart tries, anyway, tries and fails and tries again. She’s not his star, not to keep anyway, trapped in his glass jar like a suffocating firefly; she’s shooting across his sky for only a moment and in a blink she’ll be gone. She’s already gone; the light that reaches his eye is aeons old, the last swan song of her heavenly body. Some things he just knows, even as his eyelids fight the good fight so he doesn’t miss her shimmering trail.  

One day, someone will catch her and she’ll  _want_  to stay still.  They’ll see how she’s pretty in flight but fearfully beautiful at rest. And they’ll never let her go. And he wants that for her, wants her to be at rest and safe and stable and living with dogs and babies in the countryside. But it’s not today and so it’ll almost certainly not be him. Especially so soon after breaking up with her boyfriend.

David and Billie: a story of bad timing in sixteen parts.

He wipes the smudged fingerprints off the award and puts it back down at his feet.

She returns and he spies her in the corner of his eye but pretends not to notice her yet, swirls the ice cubes around his glass instead.

“I knew I shouldn’t have left you alone,” she remarks quietly as she sits, one leg tucked under and two keycards on the table. He’s unsurprised she can read the change in atmosphere; it’s like a sauna in here and he can’t breathe.

“No,” he admits through a long exhale and finally looks up at her.

They sit in silence and it’s not comfortable anymore.

“Shall we call it a night?” she finally asks and it’s about a whole lot more than tonight.

“I think that’d be best.” He hates himself and he hates the flinch of pain in the corner of her eyes and he hates whoever made up the rules. He hates how much they hurt.

She slides the keycards off the table and ducks her head down to fish for her bags between their chairs. “Can’t be arsed to go home, I’ll stay here tonight.”

“Right, yes. Okay. Good luck at the awards tomorrow. Congratulations on today’s award.”

“You too.”

“Thanks.”

There’s nothing left to say, only more awkward limbs and angels passing overhead, as the French say. He nods at her and she moves to the side to let him pass and he does so without touching her. “Good night, Bill.”

“Night, David. See you around.”

It hurts. It hurts like hell. But he keeps walking, stumbling through the halls like a drunkard trying to catch the last underground train of the night until he finds a side exit and bursts into the night, gasping at the cooling air. There’s a thunderstorm brewing: the air sizzles and the sky’s about to crack open as the summer heat breaks. Fuck, it hurts.

Fuck, it hurts.

In an alley in Kensington with heavy raindrops crashing into the pavement he realises he’d been mistaken about the wrong thing earlier. He thought he’d fall tonight but it’s not a fall at all, this thing between them. It’s not a slip or lapse: it’s something else altogether. All this, it doesn’t have to be about sin and suffering and slogging away for that illusory end reward. When he’s with her, life is fun and giddy and full of laughter and touches and why shouldn’t that be beyond the pearly gates? She’s  _fun_ , life is fun. He likes it. He likes her. Why shouldn’t  _that_  be the good, even if it’s only until the stars fade with the dawn?

If this is the closest he’ll get to her, his true perihelion, he wants to go out in a blaze.

His fingers are shaking when he texts her, hoping against hope she hasn’t turned it off yet.

_i made a fucking mistake._

There’s a minute when nothing happens and the night feels darker than ever.

And then hope vibrates in his hand and he almost drops the phone to the ground in sweaty relief.

_Yeah. You’re forgiven though. Room 214. xx_

And then he’s running, resolved nervous energy fueling his mad dash across the park and up the steps and up the stairs because the lift would take too long. The rooms are laid out in an odd order and it seems like he’s gone in a complete circle before finding the right one, knocking loudly before resting his forehead on the door to catch his breath. But he doesn’t get a chance because he falls forward when it opens almost immediately and he loses any slight ground when he sees her again and perhaps capturing her lips isn’t the most expedient way to get oxygen back in his bloodstream but that’s become only a secondary requisite to life.

He’s an object in motion now and he’s got her up against the bathroom door before the door slams shut. His knee is between her thighs, her lower lip between his teeth, her waist between his hands, her shirt twisted between his fingers. And she hasn’t missed a single beat, matching his voracity with nips of her own, torn gasps and stifled cries, hips against hips,  hardness against her softness, and  _fuck_  if this isn’t everything.

When she angles her head to deepen the kiss, rising up on tiptoe and pulling him closer with a hard tug at his hair, he cedes control for a few moments, letting her capture his tongue in her teeth before talking stock of his mouth, but he can only stay passive so long. It’s been so long. He’s done with that.  

By wedging his knee higher between her legs to a resulting gasp, he distracts her enough to suck a swollen lip into his mouth and raise her arms above her, pinning them in place on either side of her head. She writhes against his knee, rocking her hips against him until he’s jealous of his own body part. There’s a whine when he pulls it away from her but it morphs into a moan when it’s replaced by evidence of his arousal, rutting against her exactly where she’s squirming for it.

He murmurs her name into her lips and he feels her smile; he feels it twist as he widens his stance and angles his hips to the side so that his hipbone is grinding into her centre and it’s his name that passes between their mouths now. When he pulls away from her mouth so he can see her, he’s blinded by the power in those hooded eyes and dilated pupils and he has to look away again, burrowing his face in her neck and nuzzling his way down the expanse of skin until fabric stymies his progress. It moves a little when he tries to nudge it aside but the tight sleeves hold her blouse in place and his throat vibrates into an involuntary growl at the obstacle to her warm skin on his lips.

There’s a zipper. On the side. He considers opening it with his teeth but that might take longer than letting her hands free; time is very much of the essence. And she’s pushing off his blazer as the beautiful sound of zipper teeth resounds around them; in a triumphant finale, velvet and white gauze hit the floor in a tangled heap.

For the second time that night, his mouth drops open at the sight of her bare chest but this time it’s because the tape is gone and he’s finally,  _finally_  faced with her breasts in all their glory. Perfect cream-coloured mounds with pebbled tops and now she’s the cupcake and he’s the devourer and  _oh_  they’re delicious. He saves the cherry for last, sucking and biting at the underside of the lower curves first before encircling a pinnacle with the tip of his tongue. Just as she grabs a fistful of hair to move him manually he passes a thumb over a nipple and then pulls it into his mouth, feeling it tighten further on his tongue as he continues to tease the other with deft fingers.

A shot of arousal suddenly shoots up from his groin, so strong he can taste it in his teeth, and it takes a long second to realise she’s managed to snake her hand between them and is palming him through his trousers.

And what was urgent now is frantic.

“I need…Can we…”

“Bed,” she gasps out at the same time, pushing herself off the wall and beginning to walk him backward into the main part of the room. She’s unbuttoning his jeans and he’s fumbling with the complicated hook clasp on her trousers and he keeps tugging her backward by her waistband when they make it to the bed, continuing deeper into the room until they’re at the sofa.

Reversing their positions, he backs her up until her thighs hit the tall arms. Her trousers fall to the floor, kicked aside, and he hardly spares a thought for the fact that he’d been right about her not wearing knickers because she’s naked and redolent in front of him and his vision is white and tunneled again.

He kisses her, hard and wet and sloppy, and just as he feels her wobbling in his arms he spins her around and guides her to lean over the side of the sofa, his fingers ghosting along the tops of her arms down to her hands so he can move them under her cheek.

“Okay?” he rasps before clearing his throat. She assents with a keen, rubbing her thighs together in anticipation.

He wants to feel every inch of her skin on his so he’s quick about tearing off his jeans, forgetting about his shoes and having to fling them all off together in an ungraceful dance, but his fingers freeze on his top shirt button at the sight of her, naked and bent over a hotel couch waiting for him, and for a time he can only stare, awestruck.

“I swear to God, Dave,” she mutters, turning her head to shoot him a maelstrom of an expression. “If you don’t fuck me right now I’ll take care of it myself.”

So it’s with one sock on and his shirt fully buttoned and bunched up around his stomach that he presses himself into her, thigh to thigh and chest to back. A quick survey confirms how wet she is, more than ready for him, and there’s absolutely no stifling his groan at the fact. With a few strokes to spread the pre-come down his aching shaft, he spreads her legs a little more and pulls her hips up so that his tip’s just inside her heat. He stays there for a moment, counting his breaths and reciting Shakespeare in half-time to lull his heart into a slower rhythm.

It works, just, but it’s all for naught when he slides all the way inside in one smooth movement, faster than he’d intended but she’s so slippery and hot and tight and making incoherent noises and pushing back and there goes his heart. She makes that noise again, low and in the back of her throat, at his first exploratory thrust and that noise is all he wants in this universe.  _She’s_  all he wants,  _this_  is all he wants, sheathed and lost inside her warmth. There may not be anything else.

His strokes are long and controlled; she whimpers her displeasure, rocking back against him, but he holds her hips still and leans over her, dropping open-mouthed kisses to her shoulders, her back, the tops of her arms as he continues the lazy motions, determined to make this last.

She retaliates by squeezing her walls around him, the clever goddess, and his kisses turn to bites and his light grip on her hips turns bruising and his strokes turn shallow and rough. He’s pistoning into her with abandon, off-rhythm and relentless, and through the haze of need he dimly registers that her noises have tapered off into guttural inhalations, almost but not quite in time with the sound of flesh slapping against flesh.

There isn’t enough time, he’s so close, but there’s no way he’s falling without her. “Now,” he pleads, “now, Bills. Please!” He finds where they’re joined and rubs without finesse and it’s only a few seconds before she’s coming hard around him just as he’s coming hard inside her, stars and camera flashes conquering his consciousness.  

His body collapses on top of her, boneless, but his mouth refuses to be sated, greedily continuing to plant kisses anywhere he can reach. After a moment she turns her head toward him, still resting on her arms, and then her lips are back where they belong: between his. There’s a slight movement of her head that he chases and then her hand is stretched back behind her, curled around his neck and holding him in place. As if he were going anywhere. He’s pretty sure his legs are out of commission for the next few years.

There are words being born in the back of his mouth, words she doesn’t want to hear and he’s not sure he wants to say aloud. But they’re there, palpable and heavy if still underdeveloped, and she must taste them. He hopes she tastes them.

The next time is languid, between twisted sheets and with unfaltering eye contact; he worships her like she deserves and she lets him, legs tangled together and fingers entwined.  He remembers a condom and they’re giggling the whole way through, giddy and slick and in sync. His hair is sweat-sculpted by the end, his vision blurry for any distance that isn’t eyelevel with Billie, and she’s covered in a sheen that’s only partly her own. It ends with a whimper rather than a bang except the world doesn’t end.

They dress in silence once they’ve caught their breaths, no rest for the wicked even though none of this was wicked, shoes retrieved and shirts zipped back up, but it’s not awkward. It’s more like the end of festivities, Christmas evening after all the presents are lined up under the tree, midsummer’s solstice finally dipping below the horizon and the revelers heading home.

There’s probably a need for a shower but even more so there’s a need to keep her on his skin, a layer of her he can sense later, alone in his bed. He’s surprised when she re-emerges from the bathroom after only a minute or so too but he doesn’t let on why he feels the need to kiss her then, to twirl her around before letting her go. There’s a pretty good chance she knows though, since she turns around once he releases her and lifts her blouse to reveal the burgeoning bruises on her hips, smirking over her shoulder. He brushes his lips over them in apology, over the marks he left on shoulders and arms as well, knowing she’s caught the smug grin that negates his supplications.

A car is called and they leave the hotel exactly as they’d entered, hip to hip and arms around waists. She keeps her shoes in the shoebox and he watches the ground for stray glass. They arrive in Belsize Park all too soon, too soon by far when there’s a crowd of paparazzi outside her house.

Ah, the inevitable downside to being the media darlings for the evening… The inevitability of it all.

He helps her with her bags, wavering whether to get out of the cab at all and face the camera flashes. Of course he gets out. Billie’s unfazed, probably used to it all, but he’s distracted, flustered at not having the chance to say goodbye properly, to kiss her and thank her for existing. Maybe quote her some poetry and hide his feelings behind someone else’s words.

Outside the car, barefoot and small, the relentless sound of shutters snapping their theme song, she stops moving. She stops moving and the earth may stutter in its orbit when she cranes her neck up to look at him.

“Stay.”

It’s soundless, her mouthed petition, but it’s thundering in her eyes and his ears ring. His eyes widen and he finds himself unable to draw a breath as he gapes back at her.

She can’t mean it. There’s a chasm between what her eyes are broadcasting, or what he foolishly wants her eyes to be broadcasting, he knows it. It’s the closest he’ll ever come to pinning her beating wings, this moment; she’s just still enough that he could do it. There may never be another chance.

She can’t mean it.

So he leans in, brushing his lips against her ears under the guise of a friendly goodnight kiss on the cheek. “I can’t. You know that.”

The Billie grin emerges instantly and she’s movement incarnate and she doesn’t meet his eye again, sailing through the cameras and flashing her smile to their audience. He watches her until she’s safely up her steps and inside before settling back in the car, his heart heavy.

He brushes the feeling aside, certain she didn’t mean it. She couldn’t. This had never been about…that. Much as he might want to misinterpret her signals.  She may be Kuhn’s paradigm shift for him, his agricultural revolution, his Darwin and his Constantine… it doesn’t mean he’s the same for her. For all their flesh had spoken this evening there were no spoken words, none that meant anything anyway.

\--

The next evening she’s at the GQ awards in a high-backed dress, her nails a matching vibrant red and her boyfriend on her arm. She’s carrying her own evening bag and it’s the last time a camera captures them together in public.

He wonders if he should regret this thing between them, if he should be tempted to reframe her as his Delilah, his scarlet downfall.

He isn’t. He can’t. He won’t.  

His phone buzzes and he wanders out of sight of the popcorn and DVD.

_looking forward to the NTAs xx_

_you have no idea, Bills._

There’s more here than gods and devils, more than saints and sinners, black and white, stars and philosophies. 

And he knows he’s not done worshipping his restless idol yet.


End file.
